


No Rules, No Winners

by April_Valentine



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e17 Baby Blue, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/April_Valentine/pseuds/April_Valentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set just before the tag of "Baby Blue." After leaving Moretti's safe house, Reese goes back to the library.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Rules, No Winners

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Mamahub and Draycevixen for their kind beta work.

John entered the library, his steps slow. He was exhausted. He’d been up all night, first searching for Leila, turning up nothing, then finally going to Elias. The exchange had been set for six a.m. and he’d managed to get her safely back, but before he could get her to Finch, Elias ‘happened,’ and put him and the baby in the refrigerated truck. Once freed, he’d headed to where Moretti had been staying, but he’d been too late. Moretti was already gone and only Carter and the wounded Szymanski were there. The stress of the past twenty four hours was making John’s whole body ache.

Now, it was nearly dark. Dragging, John climbed the stairs. As he neared Finch’s office, he could hear Leila cooing. At the sound, the tension finally began to ease.

“Oh, John, you’re here,” Finch said, turning from where he’d been playing with Leila, dangling the little pink teddy bear for her to grab as she lay comfortably in the circle of Finch’s books that he’d used to build her playpen.

“Yeah,” John sighed. “I’m here.”

“I picked up some sandwiches. If I know you, you haven’t eaten.” Finch nodded to where a box sat near the computer monitors on the table. 

John hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday, but he wasn’t hungry. Instead he sat heavily in the chair next to the makeshift playpen, just wanting to watch the baby for a few minutes.

“Is she all right?” he asked. 

“I think she’s going to be fine. She warmed up nicely in the truck. She’s been eating and playing. I don’t think she caught cold from her misadventure. Though we might want to have a doctor check her out before we hand her over to her grandparents.”

John leaned down, reaching out cautiously toward her. He smiled slightly as Leila looked up and grasped his fingers. His throat felt tight and he couldn’t keep the image of her crying in the freezing truck from coming back into his mind. 

“What did you do to yourself?” Finch’s shocked voice came from right beside him.

“Hmm?” John was confused, distracted by the smiling baby. “What do you mean?”

When he looked up, he found Finch staring down at him, his face pinched with concern. 

“Your wrists.” Finch looked at them pointedly.

John sat back, moving his hand so Leila couldn’t reach him. He tugged his jacket sleeves down in a belated attempt to cover the bloodstains on his cuffs that he’d forgotten about. “I should go change,” he said, getting up off the chair with some difficulty, surprised that he’d stiffened up in the short time he’d been sitting there.

“John, wait.”

Sighing, John turned. The last thing he needed was his employer looking at him like he’d done something wrong. All he wanted to do was shower and sleep. He kept several fresh shirts in the library and another suit, but he really would have liked to go to his hotel. He couldn’t do that, however, until Leila was safely with her grandparents. 

“It’s nothing,” he said tightly. “I’m going to go wash up and change.”

He strode to the small room in which he kept his extra clothes and shrugged out of his coat and jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt. A glance at his bloodied sleeves told him he should just toss it in the trash. So many hours had passed that the stains had set, and he couldn’t imagine handing the shirt off to the laundry where they’d question what happened. He also knew that dry cleaning, his preferred method for cleaning his dress shirts, wouldn’t do the job either.

He wasn’t pleased when he heard Finch’s uneven steps. Most times, when he got injured on the job, his boss let him clean and patch himself up. But since he’d been shot by Mark Snow’s gunman, Finch had shown his concern over John’s inevitable injuries more overtly.

“I’m all right, Finch,” John all but snapped. He pulled off his shirt, not quite managing to hide his grimace as the fabric dragged over his abraded wrists. To distract himself, he plucked at his undershirt, making sure it was tucked in. “If you just hand me the first aid kit, I’ll...”

“John.” A moment passed before John finally turned to meet Finch’s eyes. He was holding Leila and both of them were looking at him. Finch’s expression was stern; Leila was smiling. 

John drew in a deep breath, forcibly relaxing. The baby’s face was so sweet, so happy. He couldn’t stay mad at Finch while she was there. Suddenly exhausted, he sagged into a straight backed chair. 

Finch turned to get the first aid kit and hobbled back, pulling up a second chair in front of John. He placed the box on the nearby table that held John’s spare shaving kit and some towels and opened it. “You never did tell me what exactly happened, why Leila was so cold. I presume you didn’t start out in the passenger compartment of the freezer truck.”

“After I got her from the kidnappers, Elias’ men got the drop on me. They broke my phone and took me to him. He used Leila to get me to tell him where Moretti was. He locked us in the back of the refrigerated truck. She got cold really fast. I finally yelled out to him that I’d give up Moretti’s location.” 

Finch shifted Leila to his knee and met John’s eyes. “That doesn’t explain how you managed to do that to your wrists.” 

John lifted one shoulder. “Handcuffed to a pipe inside the truck. Took me awhile to break it loose so I could hold Leila.” He spoke without connecting emotionally with the words, distancing himself as he had done in countless debriefings. Instead, he waggled his fingers at Leila and she giggled. 

“Why don’t you hold her now while I take a look?” Finch suggested. He held out the baby and John took her onto his own lap.

The baby reached out to pat at his face. John held her warm little body close a moment, just glad she wasn’t cold like she had been when he’d gotten her out of the truck. She’d been so still, so quiet then. Now she was smiling, wiggling, and so full of life she tugged at John’s heart.

Finch pulled some antibiotic towelettes out of the kit and tore several open. “Let me see, John,” he requested softly.

Cradling Leila with his right arm, John extended his left toward Finch.

“I almost want to ask how long it took you to break that pipe loose,” Finch mused, staring at the wounds on John’s wrist, “but I doubt you’d tell me.”

“That’s right,” he drawled, smiling down at Leila as he spoke to Finch.

Finch took hold of his forearm, wiping at his wrist with the towelette. John didn’t allow himself to flinch at the sting. 

“I never realized handcuffs could do so much damage.” Finch’s fingers were incredibly gentle as he continued cleaning John’s wounds. “There’s some swelling. Are you sure a doctor...?”

“No. They’ll be fine. I’ll just ice them when I get home.”

“You can ice them here,” Finch said firmly. He put down the towelette and retrieved some ointment from the kit, using a gauze square to apply it to the worst of the abrasions on John’s wrist. When he finished, he wrapped the injured area with gauze, keeping the bandage fairly loose.

John glanced over. “I can’t walk around like this.”

“I’m not suggesting you keep that on for the next month. Give me the other one.” Finch’s tone was crisp, allowing no complaints from John.

John transferred Leila to the other side of his lap and held out his right arm toward Finch. Being taken care of by his employer was making him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t like allowing the other man to see him in less than peak condition.

“John.” Finch’s voice had become softer. “It’s obvious this is bothering you, though I can’t imagine why.”

John leaned down to rest his cheek on Leila’s head. He wasn’t used to someone being concerned about his injuries. Part of him hated looking weak; compared to the many wounds he’d sustained over the years, bruised wrists hardly mattered. But underneath the awkwardness he felt, Finch’s care was giving him something he hadn’t thought he wanted or needed. He’d thought he didn’t require human contact or gentleness. Saying you didn’t need those things was easier than thinking about why you didn’t deserve them. 

Finch’s touch was careful, soothing; he clasped John’s fingers in his left hand while working with his right, smoothing the cooling cream over the chafed and scraped skin of John’s wrist. He didn’t fuss, but he wasn’t impersonal either. He seemingly wanted to be as sure that John wasn’t hurting as he intended to clean and bandage the wounds. John suddenly remembered waking up in a hospital bed, not knowing how long he’d been either asleep or unconscious, to find Finch bent over him, using a piece of gauze to dab at the incision on his belly. “We don’t want this to get infected,” Finch had murmured, eyes intent on his work, the contact strangely intimate as he swabbed the wound with his right hand while his left rested gently against John’s bare abdomen. Before he could say anything, John had faded out again. 

“I should have realized,” John sighed, “Elias wouldn’t just let me walk away with the baby. I was stupid.” He felt renewed tension surging through him and he couldn’t look at Finch. He kept his eyes on the baby, though the guilt he felt at putting her in danger was nearly too much.

“You weren’t stupid, Mr. Reese,” Finch offered. “It was a calculated risk. If you hadn’t gone to Elias, where would Leila be now?” He stroked the baby’s head. 

John didn’t have an answer. He let Finch take Leila from him, listened to his awkward footsteps as he left the room. Dispirited, John folded his arms on the table and leaned over to rest his head on them.

He must have dozed off. The next thing he knew, a soft touch stroked over the back of his head. Startled, feeling a twinge of pain from the touch that was at odds with the gentleness, he sat up, blinking. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Finch said. “I brought you some ice.” 

“Oh.” John’s head was throbbing, the ache so bad he actually felt nauseated. He rubbed the back of his neck, squinting as he looked up at Finch. “What?”

If anything, Finch looked more concerned now than he had before. “I thought..., “ he started, then pressed his lips together in a tense line. “Mr. Reese, may I?” And before John could respond, or even understand what Finch was asking, he felt the man’s hand in his hair again. Cautiously, Finch felt the back of John’s head, fingers carefully exploring a place that was sore and achy. “Yes. There’s a knot there. How did that happen?”

John was confused. He didn’t remember being hit in the head in any of the fights of the last two days. Puzzled, he tried to think back. Then, he knew. He must have done it himself, in the truck. But he didn’t want to say so.

Finch’s fingers moved from the knot on the back of John’s head, his fingers still light and careful as they shifted to his temple. Finch absently stroked through his hair, watching John closely. Annoyed with himself, John didn’t say anything. 

“You probably need this ice on your head more than on your wrists,” Finch said. When John didn’t take it from him, Finch held the bag against the back of John’s head. “Tell me, John.”

John could no more ignore that quiet insistence than he could ignore the idea of a new number coming in. He took a deep breath. “I was mad. After I told Elias where Moretti was. I slammed... I slammed my head back against the truck.” He looked up at Finch then, hating himself. “I didn’t give up so much as my name when they used electricity on me for sixteen hours. But hearing that baby cry...seeing her breath in that freezing truck and knowing she was going to die if I didn’t do something... that’s all it took to break me.” Ashamed, he put his head down again, closing his eyes.

He wanted Finch to leave, but he heard the man sit down and drag his chair a little closer. “John, you didn’t give up state secrets, and you didn’t let Leila get hurt. You gave a bad man the location of another bad man. If we weren’t doing what we do, Elias would have gotten his hands on his father even sooner. You didn’t break. You gave up Moretti to save Leila. Elias gave you no choice and you did the honorable thing.”

John wanted to believe Finch, but all he could think about was that he’d allowed Elias to go free months ago, knowing this kind of thing would happen. A good cop, Szymanski, had been shot when Moretti was taken, and he felt responsible for that too.

“Mr. Reese.” Finch’s voice had taken on that emphatic tone again, the one John had trained himself to obey in the months since he’d started working with him. He looked up. “I want you to drink some of this water.” Finch held out a bottle and John took it. “And take a couple of these, too.” He proffered some ibuprofen, but John didn’t think they’d help. “Yes, take them,” Finch urged. “They’re anti-inflammatory. They’ll help with the swelling and soreness in your wrists.” He took the ice bag away from John’s head and sat it on the table.

John was too tired to argue. He took the water, raised it to his lips and leaned back to take a long drink. It was amazingly cold and refreshing. He looked back at Finch, at the pills in his hand and without a word, picked them up and swallowed them, taking another drink to get them down. 

“I want you to eat this sandwich, too,” Finch went on, passing it to him. 

Sighing, John took it. He ate mechanically, but the sandwich was good, still fresh, roast beef with tomatoes and lettuce on wheat bread. He was hungrier than he’d realized, despite the knots in his stomach and the queasiness from his headache. He finished half, but shook his head when Finch looked meaningfully at the second piece on the plate. “Not right now,” he said, “I can’t.” He took another drink of water. “I do feel better,” he admitted self-consciously. “Thanks, Finch.”

Finch looked at him appraisingly, then took John’s right hand and moved it to lie next to where his left rested on the table. He placed the ice bag so that it covered both bandaged wrists. “That’s good, Mr. Reese. I’m glad.”

He patted the bag as it began leaching its soothing cold into John’s swollen wrists. “Leila’s taking a nap. We’ll get her things together and take her to her grandparents after you’ve had a chance to rest a little. Try to finish your water.”

John nodded. Finch was right. He needed to conserve energy, rehydrate. They still had work to do. Being angry with himself would only serve to make him weaker. He had to accept what he’d done, move on. Over the years, there had been so many things that he wished he hadn’t done. He’d just try to tell himself that this one was no worse than any of the others. 

He didn’t want Finch to think he’d give up information so easily though. “I just couldn’t let her die, Harold,” he rasped out. “If there’d been any other way, if it had just been me...”

Finch put his hand on his shoulder. “I know, John. I understand. Let it go.”

John didn’t think he could. But for Finch, he would try.


End file.
